One thing we are going to do on this series is do some more neck work.

The neck is really an important piece to relax. There is so much tension that is carried in the neck. I also think that people who tend to be a little more rigid even in their belief structures will carry a more rigid neck.

It may sound kind of unusual but I’ve noticed that the more closed minded a person’s mind tends to be or stuck in a certain perspective about the way things are or aren’t without the willingness to open up to maybe new ideas the neck has a lot of problems moving around.

There’s a lot of holding in the neck, and not letting it go.

Esoterically the neck sometimes relates to feeling at risk. There’s little sayings like, “I got my neck out on the chopping block,” or “I really got my neck out there.” so it tends to relate to a feeling of risk.

So by remaining solid in a belief structure or a way of being, one would probably feel at risk to move outside of that comfort zone. Here, of course, I’m doing a little lymph work checking, the nodes.

And now we’re going to pull, possibly using my hand you see underneath there, stretching upward and then it’s a natural kind of rotation when you get to the top. I’m doing the same thing on the other side. And then lifting it up and allowing the rotation.

There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the neck for head rotation. There’s a lot of direct and indirect connections with all sorts of things, up in the shoulders, the throat, and then let the head come back, and forward. Always careful when you move the head back. I support it and have my fingers underneath it for the cranial base release.

Always support the head but let the head support on the backs of the hands.

And then with the neck going to the sides, again you want to be very careful with the front of the neck.

I need to get a little bit of oil on for this. If it is not quite slippery enough it feels like you’re tearing their skin out. And then if you have to much you feel like you’re going to slip all over the place.

We have scaling muscles in there. We have the back of the trapezius muscle, or the upper part of the trapezius muscle towards the back of the neck I should say. We have the lavator scapulae muscle, we have the sternocleidomastoid muscle. Those are the more superficial ones. And there are small muscles around the hyoid bone. The hyoid bone is the little floating bone in the neck that protects the trachea.

For those of you who want to do this with your friends, family or partners, it’s a good idea to look at an anatomy book. Look at how the muscles run and just visualize that as you work. Visualize how the muscles are and let your hands talk to them as you go.

And be careful. Be careful of depth and pressure when you’re dealing with the neck

Bring it to the other side. The same type of thing here. And again, I’m getting all the way up to the skull, the origins and insertions, to the best of the ability of being able to palpate them.

And that really is the difference between a good massage and an average massage, is thoroughness that one feels at the end of it.

Here I just have my fingers in along that back, the back of the spine, the cervical vertebrae, and just allowing the muscles to relax as my fingers slide up that part of the spine. And we’re going to turn the head.

Now if a person’s neck is stiff and their resisting or holding it, don’t fight it. Just take it as far as it will go, and keep the feeling that they can start to trust, you know, that their head isn’t going to plop on the table or something. Eventually, after working with a person over time their neck will open up.

Sometimes there are things that have happened to their neck, people have broken their neck, they have plates in their neck or different things like that so there is a restriction on range of motion so be sensitive of that. Let the neck move where it wants to move and not where you think it wants to move.

That’s another key of respecting the body and giving it what it needs.

It is what it is. THere is no right or wrong. It’s just what you have to work with within a person, and it will give you the same benefits, no matter how far the range of motion might go.

I’m giving her a cranial base release right now. And then just check the hyoid bone, and a little bit of palpation, just very lightly. Work the trachea, esophagus area. And there we are.

Neck massage.

Thank you for watching. This is Athena Jezik.

Athena Jezik is a licensed massage therapist who specializes in Lymphatic Drainage and Cranio-Sacral Therapy.